The Burning Wire

and run juice through them somehow. It was easier and more efficient, the man had explained, and you didn’t need nearly as much voltage.
    Rhyme had concluded that the fire in the uptown substation was really a distraction to keep them focused away from Galt’s attack on the real location: probably downtown. He’d looked over the list of lava and volcano exhibits, and found the one that was the farthest away from Harlem, where everybody was looking: Amsterdam College. It was a community college specializing in office skills and associate degrees in the business professions. But their liberal arts division was having a show on geologic formations, including an exhibit about volcanoes.
    “I’m here, Rhyme.” Sachs skidded the Torino to a stop in front of the school, leaving twin tails of black on the gray asphalt. She was out of the car before the tire smoke from the wheel wells had dissipated. The smell ominously reminded her of Algonquin substation MH-10 . . . and though she tried to avoid it, a repeat image of the black-and-red dots in the body of Luis Martin. As she jogged toward the school’s entrance, she was, for once, thankful that a jolt of arthritic pain shot through her knees, partially taking her attention off the harsh memories.
    “I’m looking the place over, Rhyme. It’s big. Bigger than I expected.” Sachs wasn’t searching a scene so she’d foregone the video uplink.
    “You’ve got eighteen minutes until the deadline.”
    She scanned the six-story community college, from which students, professors and staff were leaving, quickly, uneasiness on their faces. Tucker McDaniel and Lon Sellitto had decided to evacuate the place. They hurried outside, clutching purses and computers and books, and moved away from the building. Almost everyone looked up at one point in their exodus.
    Always, in a post 9/11 world, looking up.
    Another car arrived, and a woman in a dark suit climbed out. It was a fellow detective, Nancy Simpson. She jogged up to Sachs.
    “What do we have, Amelia?”
    “Galt’s rigged something in the school, we think. We don’t know what yet. I’m going inside and looking around. Could you interview them”—a nod at the evacuees—“and see if anybody spotted Galt? You have his picture?”
    “On my PDA.”
    Sachs nodded and turned to the front of the school once more, uncertain how to proceed, recalling what Sommers had said. She knew where a bomb might be set, where a sniper would position himself. But the threat from electricity could come from anywhere.
    She asked Rhyme, “What exactly did Charlie say Galt might rig?”
    “The most efficient way would be to use the victim like a switch. He’d wire door handles or stair railings with the hot source and then the floor with the return. Or the floor might just be a natural ground if it was wet. The circuit’s open until the vic touches the handle or railing. Then the current flows through them. It wouldn’t take much voltage at all to kill somebody. The other way is to just have somebody touch a live source with two hands. That could send enough voltage through your chest to kill you. But it’s not as efficient.”
    Efficient  . . . sick word to use under the circumstances.
    Sirens chirped and barked behind her. Fire, NYPD Emergency Service Unit and medical personnel had begun to arrive.
    She waved a greeting to Bo Haumann, the head of ESU, a lean, grizzled former drill sergeant. He noddedback and began deploying his officers to help get the evacuees to safety and to form into tactical response teams, searching for Raymond Galt and any accomplices.
    Hesitating, then pushing on the glass portion of the door rather than the metal handle, she walked into the lobby of the school, against the crowd. She wanted to call out to everyone not to touch any metal but was afraid if she did that, she’d start a panic and people would be injured or killed in a crush. Besides, they still had fifteen minutes until the deadline.
    Inside there were plenty of metal railings, knobs, stairs and panels on the floor. But no visual clues about whether or not they were connected to a wire somewhere.
    “I don’t know, Rhyme,” she said uncertainly. “There’s metal, sure. But most of the floor’s carpeted or covered with linoleum. That’s gotta be a bad conductor.”
    Was he just going to start a fire and burn the place down?
    Thirteen minutes.
    “Keep looking, Sachs.”
    She tried Charlie Sommers’s noncontact current detector